Saturday, December 01, 2018

Was there a viable alternative to universal empire? The ancient Near East had much experience with localized political power in the form of city-states. But for the most part, these were helpless before imperial armies and the ideology of universal empire that motivated them. It is in the Bible that we find the first sustained presentation of a different possibility: a political order based on the independence of a nation living within limited borders alongside other independent nations.

By nation, I mean a number of tribes with a common cultural inheritance, especially a language or religion, and a past history of acting as a body for the common defense and other large-scale enterprises. The Bible systematically promotes the idea that the members of a nation should regard one another as “brothers,” and Mosaic law offered the Israelites a constitution that would bring them together in what would today be called a national state.

The king of such a state would be drawn “from among your brothers.” Its prophets, too, would be “from among you, from among your brothers.” And so would its priests, appointed to guard the traditional laws of the nation and teach them to the king “so that his thoughts should not be lifted above his brothers.” Moreover, Moses sets boundaries for Israel, instructing his people to keep their hands off the lands of neighboring kingdoms like Moav, Edom, and Ammon, which deserve their own independence. As he tells them in God’s name:

Take good heed of yourselves therefore. Meddle not with [the children of Esau], for I will not give you of their land. No, not so much a foot’s breadth. Because I have given Mt. Seir to Esau for a possession. . . . Do not harass Moav, nor contend with them in battle, for I will not give you of their land for a possession, because I have given Ar to the children of Lot for a possession. . . . And when you come near, opposite the children of Ammon, harass them not, nor contend with them, for I will not give you of the land of the children of Ammon any possession, for I have given it to the children of Lot for a possession.

Nor are these passages unique. Throughout the Bible, we find that the political aspiration of the prophets of Israel is not empire but a free and unified nation living in justice and peace amid other free nations.

The Bible thus puts a new political conception on the table: a state of a single nation that is united, self-governing, and uninterested in bringing its neighbors under its rule. This state is governed not by foreigners responsible to a ruler in a distant land but by kings and governors, priests and prophets drawn from the ranks of the nation itself—individuals who are, for just this reason, thought to be better able to stay in touch with the needs of their own people, their “brothers,” including the less fortunate among them.

As one Christian theologian has observed, the Bible mentions all the nations of the world coming together in unity precisely three times. And on each of those three occasions, they are coming together in united opposition to God.

On his recent appearance on Dave Rubin's show, Jordan Peterson signaled that the globalists are going to attempt to rebrand themselves as universalists. But whether the forces of Babel see their rule over Man as being planetary, galactic, or universal in nature, the important thing is that it is instrinsically opposed to the Will of God as expressed in the Bible, and therefore inherently evil.

Remember, the Kingdom of God is not of the fallen world. Any political ideology that is universalist or imperialist cannot be compatible with that divine Kingdom.

The theology in the Old Testament is that in the name of Israel and all his descendents, Moses was given a covenant, a contract of sorts. The children of Israel, all the offspring, were to obey God's will, and for this obedience they would be rewarded with land and earthly power. The same thing in somewhat different form repeats in an earlier period with Abraham, and Israel is Abraham's grandchild. It is nationalism of a sort, with race defined as family lineage. The arangemt was with the offspring of Israel, not mankind in general. They were were to inherit the promised land, Canaan, with a little help from God in defeating the local adversaries.

God keeps selecting blood related males from father to son, dividing one son from another to maintain the blood line even in the womb: "Jacob I loved but Esau I hated."

The bible states that Abraham had other sons and daughters by other wives after Sarah; but before his death he gave them gifts and sent them away so that they could not claim the promises and blessing divinely given to Isaac.

Ruth the Moabite becomes part of Israel when she is ready to tell Naomi “your people is my people and your God is my God,” her son being the forefather of King David himself.

Unlike the Pharisees/Fake Jews, the Israelites were patriarchal: the nationality of the children was determined by that of the father; furthermore,at the return of the Judahites after their captivity, the princes were told to put away their foreign wives.

"But whether the forces of Babel see their rule over Man as being planetary, galactic, or universal in nature, the important thing is that it is instrinsically opposed to the Will of God as expressed in the Bible, and therefore inherently evil."

"Unlike the Pharisees/Fake Jews, the Israelites were patriarchal: the nationality of the children was determined by that of the father;"

Talmudic Jewish matrilineality is rather interesting, and I wonder if there's a biological basis for it. I've noticed that Jewish women often zero in on Gamma or very shy gentile men that white women would ignore or run from. Quentin Tarantino appears to be the latest example.

"furthermore,at the return of the Judahites after their captivity, the princes were told to put away their foreign wives."

There's a very good reason for that. If the father is apathetic about his own religion and the mother isn't, the children, and often even the father himself, end up practicing the mother's religion. That happened so many times when the pagan Europeans were being Christianized it's ridiculous.

Conversely, I can't recall a single such instance involving a Christian man and pagan woman, at least where the woman hadn't already become a Christian by the time they were married. I suspect "foreign" wives may have likewise applied to those who hadn't formally converted to the Mosaic religion.

Christians have been warned against one-world, antichrist government from the beginning. All my life, up until the last few years, it was common for preachers to denounce the UN and globalism. Also, Islam is an antichrist religion -- no wonder it is embraced by the globalists.

The key, I think, is the conception of domination, as opposed to respect for sovereignty, from the individual on out in an expanding sphere. A family is the next level in the "sense of self" out from the individual, then clan or community to nation, etc. The key is the respect for the fact that, at each level, "self chooses" and respect is due to Self as a source and basis of choice, which is I think the "image of God" in which we are created. The better aligned, the more harmonious the interactions between Self and Other.

The will to force "Others" to be united in disrespect of this nature of Self is, perhaps, the true nature of evil. Because it is a denial of the fact that all things are One In God, not because of domination, but because of Love and the honoring of Self in others.

As one Christian theologian has observed, the Bible mentions all the nations of the world coming together in unity precisely three times. And on each of those three occasions, they are coming together in united opposition to God.

A very interesting observation!

Remember, the Kingdom of God is not of the fallen world. Any political ideology that is universalist or imperialist cannot be compatible with that divine Kingdom.

This is wisdom.

The technical name for this heresy is Chiliasm: the effort to bring about the Kingdom of Christ by human means. Secularist Chiliasm is even worse, because it does not even pretend to do so in the name of Christ. It is both heretical and a blasphemous mockery of the true Kingdom to come, which will have no end.

Chiliasm is one of the oldest heresies that continues to hang on, despite being confronted in the Nicene Creed: "And of His Kingdom there will be no end."

The perpetrators of this heresy are every bit as lost, wicked, and separated from God as the Nestorians, Gnostics, Marcionites, and every other heretical sect that has come and gone into hellfire.

I agree that nations are endorsed by God, and that universal rule by anyone other than Jesus is opposed to God. However, it is incorrect to suggest that God opposes all multi-national states or empires. Cyrus was obviously endorsed by God, and St. Paul says that God appointed Roman rule.

It came to me as I was reading your response that the demand by the prophet that the foreign wives be put away had a hidden purpose; for it is very likely that Jesus' lineage comes through the captivity experience; also, many Babylonians came back with the Jews and the risk was great that in the confined space of Judea that the foreigners would have polluted His bloodline: Before the captivity, the only foreign woman permitted in his bloodline were those who either by their actions or words confessed God and believed His promises.

Cyrus was obviously endorsed by God, and St. Paul says that God appointed Roman rule.Thise empures were acting as God's agents in chastising the Nation of Israel. This does not in any way imply God's approval outside that context. Given both were Pagan Empires of reknown cruelty and degeneracy, to the point that both are bywords for depravity even now, thousands of years later, your contention is obvioisly false.A man may use a rod on his son, but that doesn't mean he wants his son to be like the rod.

dienw wrote:It is important to notice that the Israelites’ conception of the nation has nothing to do with biology, or what we call race.

Bald-faced lie.

I wouldn't say so. Semitics Jews back then were, for all intents and purposes identical to other peoples of their region (Babylonians, Chaldeans, etc.) and they were separate group from them, even though they could easily pass for each other if they so desired. Jewish nationalism had a religious element that was even stronger than any biological criterion. Phenotypical criteria are easy to come by and apply (ie. no asians, blacks or blondes in this group) but Jewish nationalism was not based on that criteria, as their rules for assimilation clearly demonstrate

3 The Ammonite and the Moabite, even after the tenth generation shall not enter into the church of the Lord for ever...

...7 Thou shalt not abhor the Edomite, because he is thy brother: nor the Egyptian, because thou wast a stranger in his land.

8 They that are born of them, in the third generation shall enter into the church of the Lord.

People who try to spread their evil by appealing to Christian theology are doing so cynically and are usually unbelievers. It's like when leftists use "studies" by "libertarian" think tanks to justify mass immigration.

When the Devil starts quoting scripture to you, you know you are about to hear some serious bullshit.

So you admit that at least some emperors were acting as God's agents in creating empires? How are we to know that he has decided not to do that anymore? For instance, it is hard to believe that the Spanish conquest could have been achieved without God's endorsement.

"But whether the forces of Babel see their rule over Man as being planetary, galactic, or universal in nature, the important thing is that it is instrinsically opposed to the Will of God as expressed in the Bible, and therefore inherently evil."

VD, you say this within the context of reviewing a writer (Dr. Yoram Hazon, president of The Herzl Institute in Jerusalem) who claims:

"The Bible thus puts a new political conception on the table: a state of a single nation that is united, self-governing, and uninterested in bringing its neighbors under its rule"

The writer is referring to the old testament sections of the bible to support this claim. As such, your claim I quoted above, as you so presented, as a derivative of Dr. Yoram Hazony's claim, therefore will tend to harken a tension within the minds of your more astute audience, ...... given that alternatively you also repudiate the reality of a true judeochristian perspective, (a claim of repudiation that I for one DO agree with).

So which is it? Does the new testament (and as such true Christianity) repudiate much of the old testament or not? If it does (which is my view, which I assume you share given your past comments on this matter) then, in your view how should the astute consumer of your articles best reconcile this contradiction? (A contradiction that is not just one-off pertaining to this article alone, but is a contradiction that permeates much of your past writing, as I have tried to point out to you, a few times now, which always abruptly ends with you blocking my comments, without actually addressing my questions).

Perhaps a good question, for you first to answer, to help untangle this contradiction conundrum, is, ..... to your mind what in the true Christian perspective is antithetical to Judaism? Will your answer lead to repudiation of any elements of the jewish conception of the jewish nation? The jewish conception of the jewish nation includes the 'God's chosen people' concept. In your view does true Christianity repudiate the 'God's chosen people' concept? In my estimation it does - your thoughts?

"Before the captivity, the only foreign woman permitted in his bloodline were those who either by their actions or words confessed God and believed His promises."

@18 dienwIOW, genuine converts. I don't think physical bloodline pollution was the issue here, but rather concerns about a lot of crypto-Babylonian-pagans or whatever else showing up among the Israelite population.

"Given both were Pagan Empires of reknown cruelty and degeneracy, to the point that both are bywords for depravity even now, thousands of years later, your contention is obvioisly false."

@19 Snidely WhiplashThere were degrees of pagan depravity. The Romans were Boy Scouts compared to the Moloch-worshipping Carthaginians, for example, and that may have been one reason God chose them to take over the entire Mediterranean region. Also, it made it much, much easier for Christian missionaries to travel, with Roman law and order in force everywhere.

The writer is referring to the old testament sections of the bible to support this claim. As such, your claim I quoted above, as you so presented, as a derivative of Dr. Yoram Hazony's claim, therefore will tend to harken a tension within the minds of your more astute audience, ...... given that alternatively you also repudiate the reality of a true judeochristian perspective, (a claim of repudiation that I for one DO agree with).

There is no "contradiction conundrum", Gamma Boy, and I have no intention of answering any of your idiotic questions.

Please note that when you try this hard to sound erudite, you wind up sounding like a rapper using five-syllable words he doesn't understand.

VD - again with the ongoing avoidance with respect to engaging with my questions.

Look - I like to try to understand how interesting and outspoken thinkers (like you) have formed their opinions. As I can't obtain that via normal give and take (because of your pattern of balking), then, as per normal courtesy, can you please point me in the direction of another writer that expounds on the underlying premises that make your case for the falsehood of judeochristianity, in a way you that you agree with, but in a deeper and more meaningful way that you do here, or alternatively, if you have already done this yourself, could you please point back to a previous article of yours that I could review on this matter.

A great deal of the evil in the world can be laid at the feet of egalitarianism. We see it in other forms....universalism, ecumenicalism, globalism, depending on the application.

If all individuals are Equal, then all Families are necessarily Equal too, and all nations, and all races, and genders. But this must be the biggest IF in the world and it is from this big IF, that so much evil flows. It is evil because it is not true and it has never been true and it will never be true, as any rational being can see with their own eyes. Anything that is the opposite or enemy of the Truth, must necessarily exist to deceive. It is a lie and no good can come from the Father of Lies.

WE fight against egalitarianism because it is untrue and cannot be true, and it is the enemy of Freedom. Man cannot be free if he is limited by what is considered Equal.

Wild Man, VD is correct that your question is poor. How could the New Testament "repudiate" the Old Testament? For instance, a large chunk of the "Old Testament" is history? Did Jesus somehow render that past history false? Your question does not even make sense except at a sophomoric level.

@31 Thank you,A generation is part of a sub-familial, national, and sub-racial identity. Media use of the different generations the universalists have created is an attempt to falsely employ the logic of belonging to their evil universalist family, specifically the family who claims to currently control the world.If you still think in terms of boomer, gen x, millennial, and whatever comes next, and you are only able to describe reality in the vague terms lent to you that have such small amounts of truth in them, please be specific and reject these mundane "generational" heuristics and do not want for inclusion in the media worldview. God bless.

@37 - True Christianity is available for anybody, of any background, if so predisposed to incorporate the Christian message.

@38 - OK - restating then, point me in a direction then, another source, that makes the case for your claim that judeochristianity is a falsehood, in a way you that you agree with, but in a deeper and more meaningful way than you do here, or alternatively, if you have already done this yourself, could you please point back to a previous article of yours that I could review on this matter. I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering about this.

Wild Man, again I fail to see any repudiation. Neither the Jews nor the Gentiles were saved before Jesus, and both Jews and Gentiles can be saved after Jesus. The promises made to the Jews were that the Messiah would be the king of all nations so fulling that promise is not a repudiation.

To counter the "But Jesus changed all that!" argument, the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats was useful. Matthew 25: 31 - 32:

"When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats."

There you have both the nations and Christians together in one verse. There ARE nations, and Christians exist within the frame of the nation here on Earth. The nations are stated to exist before Christ's return, and then afterwards are they separated out.

@41 - you said - "The promises made to the Jews were that the Messiah would be the king of all nations so fulling that promise is not a repudiation."

Yes. Tricky that. Jesus' repudiation of your stated promise is a repudiation not in name but in spirit (like I already outlined above @34 - fulfillment of jewish prophesy, in a way diametrically opposed to the original meaning of the prophesy, is in effect a repudiation of the original meaning). This is not so uncommon and so should be easy to understand. The world is filled with agenda hijackers. And Jesus too partook of agenda hijacking (to the benefit of all - to my mind).

"If all individuals are Equal, then all Families are necessarily Equal too, and all nations, and all races, and genders. But this must be the biggest IF in the world and it is from this big IF, that so much evil flows."

@24. Tars, good point this:

"People who try to spread their evil by appealing to Christian theology are doing so cynically and are usually unbelievers. It's like when leftists use "studies" by "libertarian" think tanks to justify mass immigration."

For anyone fooled by the drivel known as Liberation Theology peddled by Bergoglio et al. here's a little nugget of Catholic dogma from what many consider the last legit pope:

"It is quite legitimate for nations to treat their differences as a a sacred inheritance and guard them at all costs."

Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth who is married to a Levite who are the priesthood, to marry one you have to be Levite. Since Elizabeth is her cousin this makes Mary half Jew and half Levite, which makes Jesus half King line half Priest line sans Holy Spirit.

Jack wrote:Jesus was of the tribe of Judah, which Is what I meant by Jew. I recognize that "Jew" is an ambiguous word.

Correct. The deception is the conflation of Jew = Judean/Judahite with Jew = follower of the Babylonian, Talmudic religion; the latter could be anyone of any ethnic origin, say Ashkenazi, Khazar, even Hopi, if one was to be so foolish to convert.. This deception has confounded the various translations of the bible; it had also caused confusion in the bible commentaries.

ldigiorgio wrote:Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth who is married to a Levite who are the priesthood, to marry one you have to be Levite. Since Elizabeth is her cousin this makes Mary half Jew and half Levite, which makes Jesus half King line half Priest line sans Holy Spirit.

The lineage is patriarchal: a Levi father begets a Levite child regardless of the mother's tribe. Two gospels trace Jesus' tribal ancestry: He is of Judah.

Ok Gamma boy... I’m not speaking for anyone but myself but here is the hints you would have to be grateful for if you’re honest:1. Judaism as we know it today is younger than Christianity.2. There are no Jews today in terms of those people who are thought of as Jews relating to the Old Testament. Those Jews became Christians.Those who did not invented their own Talmudic religion.

Jews (of today) are not Christians. There is no such thing as judeochristian anything.

One of the Pterson interviews I watched was a discussion with a Jewish man who had helped Alice Cooper get his act started. At one point this interlocutor said precisely this, that he saw the highest goal as that of bringing about the kingdom of God on Earth. JP immediately said, I agree.What Rock & roll had to do with that remained a mystery to me.

It is not entirely a settled matter in the Bible that a person has to be a biological offspring of Abraham.

According to God:

Genesis 17:11 You [Abraham] shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin. It will be a token of the covenant between me and you. 12 He who is eight days old will be circumcised among you, every male throughout your generations, he who is born in the house, or bought with money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring.

Now even if the person bought with money happens to be a Hebrew (or Jew or Aramean or whatever), the covenant is not with an ethic group, it is with Abraham. And right at the very start he brings in people who are not his offspring.

And by the way, nobody really knows where the word Hebrew came from. Could be a tribal group, probably identified by their dialect, or a corruption of an Egyptian word. The word is not used very much in the Bible. A Jew was somebody who came from the Roman province of Judea. But then earlier on it was Judah. So what would be the word that would describe somebody from Judah?

> Does the new testament (and as such true Christianity) repudiate much of the old testament or not?

Matthew 5:17 - Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

This is Christianity 101. The fact that you ask it renders the honesty of your questions dubious.

> ...judeochristianity,...

You keep using that word. There is no such thing.

> ...point me in a direction then, another source, that makes the case for your claim that judeochristianity is a falsehood,

The blog archives are off to the left. Use them.

> Neither the Jews nor the Gentiles were saved before Jesus,

That's an arguable point. As long as they obeyed the law and sacrificed appropriately to God their sins were supposedly forgiven by the promise of the coming Messiah. But Christ's sacrifice was necessary to fulfill the promise, so your point is valid.

> On his recent appearance on Dave Rubin's show, Jordan Peterson signaled that the globalists are going to attempt to rebrand themselves as universalists.

I'm not sure that's going to work well, given how desperately they've been trying to deny an sort of universal morality for so long. But they've been successful at promoting new branding before, so I'll have to wait and see.

Jews are the descendants of Hebrews who, while in captivity in Babylon, stopped worshipping God and turned to Satan, and more importantly, continued the tradition of Satan worship.

Before Jesus, many realized something was wrong when John the Baptist started preaching the message of getting back to God, and that a Savior was coming. Jesus fulfilled that, and John the Baptist's followers recognized Jesus as who John predicted would come. A very large amount of the Judean populace became Christians... that success (and the huge drop in monetary offerings to the Pharisees and their rabbis) is what inspired specific additions to the Talmud saying that Jesus was the worth evil to ever appear on earth and to say that he's spending eternity in hell, buried head-down in feces.

Where can I find the bible verses for the nations coming together in unity *against* God? If I were to make an educated guess, I imagine one would be in revelation, when the nations unite against God's holy city. And perhaps during the time of Noah.